The modders behind a map conversion mod from the Xbox 360 version of Red Dead Redemption into the PC version of GTA V had to be shutdown after Take-Two’s legal team stepped in and told the modders they had to close up shop working on the GTA V mod based on the console assets of Red Dead Redemption.

VG 24/7 picked up the news from the GTA forums, where project lead Mr. Leisurewear posted the following comment…

“I know this is hard pill to swallow, but as you may have noticed we did get contacted , and we sadly have to say we are stopping this project.

 

“So thanks guys, we were all so happy to see this, but it isn’t going to happen, sorry”

A couple of mod members told Mr. Leisurewear to just keep on working in silence and then maybe let some “Russian hackers” get a hold of it and “leak” it to the public. It’s not a bad way to go about it really.

Some worried that Mr. Leisurewear would delete all the assets, but he assured them that he did not destroy the files, since they’ve been working on the conversion mod for the past three years. You can see some of their work with the video below from ssgn. The original video had to be removed from .White’s YouTube channel.

The team working on the mod were known as .White, and it basically featured a whose who of the GTA V modding community, including veteran programmer and scripter, jedijosh920. Nearly every single major scripting mod we’ve written about over the years usually comes from jedijosh920.

Anyway, the mod consisted of ripped Xbox 360 assets and was a total conversion for GTA V.

The mod consisted of all new single-player missions and content, and consisted of 25,000 lines of custom written code by Mr. Leisurewear.

A number of new textures and custom written shaders using custom made lighting tools were also designed to help with the conversion process, since the lighting and shaders in GTA V is very different from what was used in the original Red Dead Redemption.

The project seemed to be coming along decently enough until Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games, put a stop to it. According to Mr. Leisure he’s not even allowed to release any of the code or tools he’s made for the modding project. So you won’t be able to download the toolkit and finish up where he left off.

A lot of real fans are pissed off about this given that this would technically fall under the fair use label of transformative copyrighted material being used for education, parody, research or teaching. Actually, this would have been a great teaching resource given that they had do a lot of reverse engineering to get the Red Dead Redemption assets to work with the PC version of GTA V.

Nevertheless, Take-Two put a stamp on the project.

Some people presume this could be due to Take-Two considering releasing a PC version of the original Red Dead Redemption, while others believe this may be due to Take-Two considering releasing Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC. Even still, it’s a completely different game with completely different play-styles and mechanics, and essentially they’re shutting down a project using seven year old assets from a discontinued home console. What a bizarre waste of resources.

Nevertheless, Take-Two’s lawyers have been increasingly hostile to PC gamers and modding community since GTA V released. They’ve issued cease and desist letters to modders who were working on custom multiplayer servers so PC gamers could play online using modded games (something that Take-Two prohibits in the vanilla version of the game), and they removed the ability to play online with mods via private servers, as reported by PC Invasion. So essentially if you want to play GTA V online with mods, there’s no legal, authorized way to do so that doesn’t involve getting perma-banned.

This is just another notch in Take-Two’s ever-growing list of actions taken against their own community.